


adventures in post-apocalyptic prank-calling

by thescrewtapedemos



Series: Radiation Blues [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Danger Days AU, M/M, pirate radio, special appearance by Sir Bob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or; how Joel Zimmerman stopped being a dick and learned to love the bass drop</p>
            </blockquote>





	adventures in post-apocalyptic prank-calling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Steelwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steelwing/gifts).



> merry christmas molly, you dirty skrillmau5 shipper. may god and/or joel zimmerman not come after my ass for this.

He gets the station’s frequency from Tommy Chow Mein.

They're shooting the shit while he loads his car up with the cargo for his latest run. Talking music mostly, classic zonerunner bullshitting about the shows they've been to, musicians they've met. He's not even paying much attention when he roundabout mentions he kinda misses the electro sound of City music.

Not that he's some fucking City sympathizer, not even close. He likes zonerunner music alright, all its roaring guitars and badly-tuned glory. But it’s just… not the same.

Tommy gets it maybe, a little. Anyways he tells Joel about the station, gives that week's frequency.

Joel doesn't know much about it yet but with a name like _Radio Skrillex_ he's pretty sure he's going to have some goddamn _opinions_.

//

He’s out on the back roads for most of his run for Tommy, riding the edge of the zones where the radiation and craggy geography make even Dr. D’s broadcast so much patchy static and cryptic half-sentences. He doesn’t mind the solitude but he’s sort of annoyed he can’t check out the new station. It’s not until days later that he gets a clear signal, right at the end of the week when he would’ve had to ask Tommy for the new frequency.

He has the frequency dialed in, volume down low so what’s been nothing but the hiss of static for days now doesn’t get annoying. It’s down so low he doesn’t even notice the point that the static tips into a beat, into music, just slides from one hand with two fingers on the wheel and the other dangling out the window to both hands tapping a rhythm into the faux-leather, something suspiciously like a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

He laughs when he realizes what’s happened and cranks the volume until it vibrates the door under his elbow. This is what he’d been fucking _talking_ about, the pounding rhythm and crisp edges, the clever turns of the music that just don’t come from a warped old zonerunner guitar. This is what he’d missed.

The music winds down and fades out and then someone’s talking.

“You just listened to the Zone’s very own electro-messiahs, Justice,” the dude says. “And this is your favorite airwave disc jockey Skrillex. Up next I’ve got you a special something courtesy our very own DJ Hanzel, and tonight is trance night so I don’t want to hear any of you wub-lovers dialing in to bitch like you do every week. Feel free to call in requests, I’m feeling generous, but this is Skrillex out for the next hour.”

Joel considers as something filters through his speakers that’s- fuck, it’s really good. Exactly what he wanted. Fucking Tommy Chow Mein, satisfying all customers.

Skrillex. Alright. Stupid name but he’s rocking _Deadmaus_ as a moniker so what can he really say.

Either way he's got some Frankenstein hybrid monster of a two-way radio and a cell phone rigged by that German kid, Zedd. He can call in, he's got the means. He just doesn't have anything to say. He doesn’t know the scene well yet – he knows Justice but who doesn’t, has a sneaking suspicion who DJ Hanzel really is, but otherwise he’s lost.

He shrugs it off and turns the volume even higher, until the bass makes his speakers crackle alarmingly.

//

Joel doesn’t _do_ embarrassment so his first call is spur of the moment, a combination of Skrillex’s bad habit of not announcing songs when he plays them and Joel’s own lack of something to do when he’s between jobs that isn’t smoking or listening to the radio.

“What’s up?” Skrillex asks when Joel dials in. He’d done it mid-song to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t be broadcasted. He can hear the music in the background of the call and through his speakers, a weird double-delay resulting in a dizzying echo effect he has to shake away before he can focus on his words.

“Yeah, uh, this is Deadmaus,” he says, a touch awkward.

“Cool,” Skrillex says. He sounds like he’s smiling. “What can I do for you, Maus?”

“That song you were playing last, what was it?” Joel asks.

“DVNO,” Skrillex says and then laughs. “It’s just the letters. It’s by Justice.”

“Alright, thanks,” Joel says and then hangs up awkwardly.

//

He leaves the radio tuned to Skrillex’s station now. He’s considering talking to Tommy about an upgrade to his speakers, to take the bass to the next level. Skrillex’s taste in drops runs heavy and it’s taking its toll in a way that Dr. D’s station never had.

Joel turns the music up way too loud anyway.

//

“What’s up?” Skrillex asks.

“More Daft Punk, dude,” Joel says and grins when Skrillex laughs.

“Hi, Maus,” he says. “I’ll consider it a request. Later!”

“Bye,” Joel says, and hangs up.

//

His next run takes him out to the edge of the zones again.

It didn’t bother him before, how lonely it is out there. No one lived out that far voluntarily, not unless they were truly desperate or truly crazy. Too much radiation to grow anything but cancer.

Joel drives through it and pretends like the static that comes through his radio’s speakers doesn’t bother him in the slightest.

//

It’s pretty late in the morning and Joel hadn’t slept the night before. Hasn’t slept in a day and a half, actually.

He growls at the bright sun on the sand and irritably flips down the visor. He’s got a headache building in his temples, ache thin and sharp, slicing behind his eyes. It’s a nasty combination of too many days in a row sleeping only a few hours at a stretch and downing too many cups of watery caffeine-powder mixtures in an attempt to combat the fatigue. His own damn fault too, no one else to blame.

It’s not like he’s in that much of a hurry. It’s just difficult to convince himself to stop when he’s got tires biting into the pavement and a destination somewhere ahead.

The music isn’t helping, not in the slightest, but Joel refuses to turn it down. Even though it’s making his temper worse, spiking with every jump in tempo or especially shrill drop.

He’s stopped for a while, a break to take a piss and lay around and swear at the empty, sunny sky until he feels a little better. If he were sensible he’d give up and climb into the backseat, haul a blanket over his head and try to snatch an hour or two before it got too hot.

He isn’t sensible. Instead he’s got the radio cranked higher than he should and the sun baking down on him through the windshield. At least he’s sipping at a stale bottle of water.

“And that was Adventure Club, so give it up for some fresh new faces in this crusty-ass dump,” Skrillex breaks in over the fading end of the song. “Up next I've got the latest straight from Spitfire’s sliders to your ears. Looks like this track is… 100% In The Bitch? Hey Spitfire, killing the name game as usual. Anyways, enjoy!”

It takes Joel a second to actually recognize the name through the haze of unpleasant, headache-induced annoyance but the instant he does he’s reaching for the handset, punching in the frequency with practiced ease and then waiting through the hum of static.

It takes a few seconds for Skrillex to pick up and Joel has time to hear the beginning of the track.

It's good. Joel swears under his breath, beyond annoyed. It’s genuinely not bad. It's fucking hilarious actually, and he wonders who that little shitfuck convinced to do vocals for it. Catchy as hell.

“What’s up?” Skrillex asks in Joel’s ear.

“Spitfire?” Joel demands, aware his tone is probably way too loud and also that Skrillex probably has no idea what he’s trying to say. “Seriously, fucking _Spitfire_?”

“Maus?” Skrillex asks after a beat of silence. He sounds off-balance and Joel would almost feel a little bad if he weren’t so completely infuriated.

“Shut the fuck up,” he throws an arm out to the side even though Skrillex definitely can’t see it, nearly knocking over his bottle of water in the process. “Listen, Spitfire? You’re going to give _that_ little fuckwad airtime? He’s a shithead!”

Skrillex doesn’t say anything for long moments. Joel’s angry breathing fills the silence instead.

“Can I talk now?” he asks when the silence has gone on long enough to get really obvious. He’s laughing inside, Joel can tell.

“Fuck off,” Joel says belligerently. Skrillex apparently takes that as permission.

“What’d Spitfire ever do to you?” he asks, tone amused. “He’s always been a solid dude around me.”

“He's a jackass!” Joel exclaims.

Skrillex pauses for more dead air. In the background the vocalist tells Joel he doesn't care if Joel drinks beer.

“Maus, _you're_ a jackass,” Skrillex explains patiently. Joel opens and closes his mouth a few times. He's trying to come up with a comeback but he can't… really argue.

“He insulted the fucking _Nyanmobile_ ,” Joel decides on at last, affronted.

His car is his fucking baby and the little asshole Spitfire had taken one look at it and laughed so hard he'd barely noticed Joel going to punch him in time to dodge. Fucking dicksmack.

“Dude,” says Skrillex, and the fucker’s almost certainly laughing. “That's _your_ car?”

“Obviously,” Joel says suspiciously.

“Your car’s fucking ugly,” Skrillex says and he's definitely laughing at Joel now.

Joel gapes down at the radio for a second. He's almost kind of flattered actually, that his car is distinctive enough to get recognized by name alone. On the other hand…

“Fuck you,” he says and slams his thumb on the end-call button.

They just don't understand his genius, he assures himself. His car is beautiful as fuck.

Skrillex is almost incoherent with laughter when the track ends, his voice shaking with it.

“Special request for just a shit-ton of Spitfire tracks,” he says, and Joel swears in admiration because _the little fucker_. “So I'll be spinning that all night long. Looks like you've got a secret admirer, Spitfire!”

Joel leaves the radio on mostly out of spite.

Skrillex relents halfway through the night, right as Joel turns onto the sweet stretch of baby-smooth highway right on the border of Zone 3. He’s gunning the engine for a real one-man drag race when the track spins down to conclusion and brief silence fills the space.

The next track is old-school Daft Punk and Joel maybe, possibly might smile. Just a little bit.

//

Joel’s employer ends up a couple cans of Power Pup and a bag of jerky short of the payment for the run. He offers a fifth of vodka to make up the difference, apologetic like Joel wouldn't have asked for that exact thing if he'd known it was on offer.

“Straight from that nightmare Sebastian’s little hell,” the dude had said and spat on the ground.

Joel saves the eye-roll for when he's gotten all the way back to his ride, more out of deference to the fact he needs to keep the jobs coming than any respect. Like he gives a singular shit about where his vodka comes from. Piped from the highest skyscraper in Battery City or some junker distillery in some warlord hellhole, Joel just wants to be deadass drunk.

He drives a mile or two out into the desert, arrow-straight away from any roads or towns. Enough to feel sort of safe, to kick his door open and crank his seat back and turn on the radio with his feet on the dash, chugging straight from the bottle. There’s no such thing as City on a night like this, no such thing as danger that’s actually _dangerous_.

Hours later and he’s giddy, laughing too loudly in the quiet night at nothing at all. Cold glass bottle cradled between his thighs and an indulgent number of cigarette butts littering the desert floor just out the car door. The moon’s a receding white rim on the horizon. Skrillex’s voice is fighting through the static, framing the music just so.

“Up next,” Skrillex says, “I’ve got a sneak peek I’m sure you’re all dying to hear. Our very own Zedd’s dropped a new single and I have been assured it is, and I’m quoting here, ‘totally fire’. After that I’m spinning requests all night long, so give me a buzz in the next minute if you’ve got a craving!”

The idea occurs to him and he’s piss-drunk so he knows he shouldn’t, he knows. He reaches for his radio anyway, cradles the set to his ear as he thumbs in the frequency. It’s all he can do to keep his laughter bottled up tight, in his ribcage and out of his mouth.

There’s a soft hum of background noise, then a sharp burst of static and a click. Then it’s Skrillex’s voice on the radio, in Joel’s ear, almost dizzying in stereo.

“And what can I do for _you?_ ” he asks, trying for a purr, just a hint of a stumble over the words making them goofy instead of sexy.

“Your refrigerator running?” Joel asks, feels the drunk, sleep-deprived giggle well up in his throat and tries to swallow it back down. He's even funnier with the half-second delayed echo of his own voice on the radio. God, he's a fucking genius.

“Maus? What the fuck, dude, no one has a fucking refrigerator-,” Skrillex says. His voice is annoyed and sharp and amused.

“You better go fucking catch it!” Joel interrupts and the laughter spills out this time before he can catch it back, and he hangs up with a brisk _click_ over the radio speakers.

There's a moment of static-filed silence. Joel holds his breath through it, shaking with drunk, stupid laughter.

“Fuck that guy,” Skrillex says and he's so amused, barely sounds annoyed at all. Joel slips down out of his seat to lay in the gritty dirt as Skrillex queues up the next track - _pirate radio at its finest, it's ex-Billboard veteran himself, Zedd!_ \- and laughs and laughs and laughs.

//

Joel’s lucky enough to have the radio going when it happens.

He’s in the habit of leaving it on and tuned to Skrillex’s station even when he’s not in motion. It’s almost comforting having the constant noise, someone talking in his ear even if it’s just meaningless radio patter. Joel’s not interested in examining the reason why, more interested in keeping his sorry ass in one piece when his run takes him into Zone 1, just kissing distance from the City outskirts.

He’s stopped for the evening to eat, a half-can of Power Pup and most of a bottle of water. The radio’s playing something upbeat, something with a bit of kick and Joel’s foot taps along when he’s not paying attention to stop it.

The harsh burst of static slices through the music right on the edge of a bass drop, so sudden it startles Joel into dropping his can of kibble into the dirt. For half a second he’s dipping to grope after the can, swearing at it and the dirt and whatever dickhead decided that putting a burst of static into a drop was a good idea.

Then the static cuts into hurried words, Skrillex’s voice slurring and panicked, and Joel freezes.

“Going to be taking a hiatus, folks, seems-,” there’s a pause and a rattling crash and then Skrillex is back, even more hurried. “Seems BLI sussed out my little hiding spot and I’m having to move out in a hurry. Catch the next broadcast frequency from Tommy, you know the drill. Stay safe and-!”

The transmission cuts again into hissing white noise that doesn’t lighten into music or more words.

For a heart-stopping second Joel thinks he’s about to puke. Then the feeling settles into a sinking feeling in Joel’s gut he pushes away as soon as he recognizes.

It’s not his fucking problem. He’s got no stake in it.

He reasons mercilessly with the sick feeling curdling his stomach, until it fades into manageable anger. It's not like it's even a big deal, Dr. D runs into this shit all the time and gets away clean. Skrillex will be fine. Fuck him for not being careful enough anyway.

Joel scoops the Power Pup can from the ground and resumes eating.

Later, when he’s got his wheels on the road, the pavement screams and it just doesn't fill up the silence. It sounds like it's kind of missing something.

He'd turned off the radio, thought the silence of rising wind and pavement under tires would be better than jagged white noise.

Joel swears at that and the sick feeling still lingering in his gut and flicks his half-smoked stale-ass cigarette out the window just to be wasteful. Fuck that and fuck everything else as well. He'll be cold in his fucking shallow grave before he lets the fate of some random dusty fucking DJ get to him.

He slaps both hands on the wheel once and bears down on the gas, pushing the edge of his speedometer. It’s not his business what happens to an asshole radio jockey with questionable taste in beat drops. He’s got a hundred miles of hot desert road to burn his tires into and a job to do.

//

He checks with Tommy casually, not _every_ time they see each other but maybe every other time. Tommy probably notices – he’s a wily son of a bitch, there’s not much that gets past him – but he doesn’t say anything about it except to shrug.

“Haven’t heard yet,” he says. Sometimes he adds, “Haven’t heard that he’s dead yet, thought,” as if that puts anything to rest in Joel’s mind. People disappear all the time in the Zones. Maybe Skrillex is alive but it’s more likely he isn’t.

Joel tunes into Dr. D’s station occasionally but he doesn’t have anything to say Joel particularly wants to hear either.

//

He’s not expecting anything when he stamps his way into Tommy’s latest little hideout, an abandoned strip mall office way out on the inner rim of Zone 5. He’s got a box of something he hadn’t cared enough to ask about under his arm and nothing but general irritation on his mind. It’s distracting, the bad-temper, so he misses Tommy’s expression until he’s a couple feet away and shuffling the box around to offer it to him.

Tommy’s grinning like a goddamn Drac, so wide it has to be hurting his cheeks.

“What,” Joel demands suspiciously, and Tommy shakes his head.

“Hand over the goods, Maus,” he says, “Important shit first.”

Joel reminds himself sternly that he really shouldn’t deck Tommy in the face if he wants to ever have a job with anyone ever again, _ever_ , and hands over the goods.

They spend a few minutes haggling pointlessly over the price they’d already agreed on and then another few minutes while Tommy digs his payment out of various boxes. He taps his foot through it all, antsy to the point of snapping. Tommy’s grin just gets bigger, the prick.

“So what’s the fucking Jack the Ripper grin for?” Joel demands when the bag of assorted food and water has been handed over. Tommy leans back in his chair, hands behind his head.

“Skrill’s back on the air,” he says, and Joel takes a half-second to process before he’s swearing in shock.

“Fuck, seriously? I thought-,” he cuts himself off before he says _I thought he was dead_. “What’s the frequency?” he demands instead.

Tommy rattles it off for him, grinning like a jackass the whole time. Joel doesn’t comment, too busy making absolutely sure the numbers are solid in his head. He doesn’t really bother with more than a grunt goodbye either, just snatches the sketchy map to his next pickup that Tommy holds out and leaves.

He doesn’t take the car out of park when he climbs in, just throws his food in the back. The radio’s off, has been for a week at least, and it takes a second to turn on when Joel punches the power button. It lets out a burst of dead air when it does finally come to life, still tuned to an empty frequency.

Joel dials in what Tommy had said was the right one with steady fingers.

Music pours from his speakers. Not white noise, not static, just pounding beat and someone talking about… Japanese lessons?

It’s Spitfire, it’s fucking _100% Percent In The Bitch_ , and Joel doesn’t think he’s ever heard a track sound so good in his life.

He leans forward until his forehead is pressed against the faux-leather of his steering wheel and laughs until his stomach hurts. Until the track ends and there’s a moment of static silence.

“That was Spitfire’s classic 100% In The Bitch,” Skrillex says and Joel lets out a breath that feels heavier than it should be. “And it’s good to be back, folks. Scarecrows can’t keep yours truly down for long, I promise. For this special occasion I’m going to be dropping a little something I’ve been working on. I think I’m titling it Long Drive but we’ll see.”

The car purrs when Joel kicks the engine into motion and peels out of Tommy’s shitty little parking lot. Joel’s grinning and he’s not at all interested in hearing what Tommy would have to say about it.

The track goes on long enough for Joel to run out of elation. It sounds good – it _is_ good, a little poppy in places but it fills the airwaves with noise in the way Joel’s missed so much. Joel can’t stop tapping his fingers to the beat, tapping his toes against the floor.

He’s driving erratically. It’s difficult to concentrate for some reason.

The track ends and a new one starts, something Joel doesn’t recognize. Skrillex doesn’t say anything though and Joel pulls to a stop before he drives straight off the road. There’s something itching under his skin, impatient and almost anxious. He kicks against the floor for a moment, grumbling into the sound of the music, and then reaches for the handset.

He fumbles the frequency and has to key it in twice. It doesn’t help the itch.

“You’re calling Radio Skrillex,” Skrillex answers the phone and it’s all his radio voice, fake and cheerful. “I’m not really taking requests right now but-,”

“Hey,” Joel interrupts. His tongue feels heavy.

Skrillex pauses for a moment, a beat of static and then laughter bubbles up.

“Oh, hey Maus. What’s up?” he asks. It’s not his radio voice anymore. It’s more authentic, deeper and less falsely cheerful.

“Your new track,” Joel says abruptly because it's not really what he wants to say but it's still true. “I like it, it's good. You should play more of your own shit, it's fucking worth it.”

“Oh,” says Skrillex. “Thanks, man.”

He sounds fine. He sounds totally normal, totally unchanged. Joel forces his jaw muscles to unclench, taps an edgy knuckle against the steering wheel to try to let some of the tension out. It doesn’t really work.

Silence lapses. It's uncomfortable, waiting silence from Skrillex, like he knows there's more Joel wants to say but doesn't know how to. Joel grits his teeth at it. He hates silences, hates this kind of conversation, hates playing games when being a jackass is so much easier and more honest.

He could play it off like that's all he'd called in about, just a blunt _that's all I was gonna say, later_.

“I was listening when you went off the air,” Joel blurts out into the silence instead.

“Oh,” Skrillex says, and then he laughs and it sounds fucking _embarrassed_. “Yeah, that.”

“Yeah,” Joel says and presses a thumb to his temple for a moment. He can almost feel the headache brewing. “That.”

“Did you worry?” Skrillex asks and – holy shit. The fucker is _teasing_ him like… like some normal bullshit. Teasing Joel about his own possible death. What the _fuck_.

“Fucking no,” Joel responds on reflex, a knee-jerk growl. Skrillex laughs anyway, disbelieving and still so carefree. It’s beyond infuriating. “Fuck you,” Joel continues and Skrillex just laughs harder. Joel has to smile eventually, unwillingly.

Silence falls again, still that awkward silence from before even though this time Joel doesn’t have a fucking clue what he wants to say now. If he even _has_ something to say. He doesn’t say anything at all and isn’t sure if that’s any better.

“Maus?” Skrillex asks at last.

He sounds serious. The laughter’s gone, all levity and teasing erased. Instead he’s hesitant, almost… guilty? Joel doesn’t fucking know.

“Yeah?” he asks suspiciously.

“My name’s Sonny,” Skrillex says after another long hesitation, awkward and quiet, and Joel feels the bottom of his gut drop away in a mad rush of vertigo.

Sonny.

 _Sonny_.

Joel doesn’t-

He doesn’t know what to do with this.

This new silence grows for long breaths, silence accented by the soft thud of music from Joel’s speakers and the _shh_ of breathing from Sonny’s end. The quiet dances on Joel’s nerves like knives on piano wires, Sonny’s words hanging in the air like a bad fucking smell.

“I don’t…” he says at last, and really fucking hates that he doesn’t have any more words than that.

“It’s alright,” Sonny says and Joel can actually hear the little smile in his voice. It makes some twisted thing in Joel’s chest yank even tighter. “I gotta get back to the broadcast anyway. I’m good, Maus. Thanks for checking in.”

The line clicks and then goes dead and the music fades over Joel’s speakers. Sonny’s voice comes in announcing the next track and Joel leans back and stares at his dirty ceiling until the music fades in again.

Sonny. Fuck.

//

“This is Skrillex and you’ve been listening to, that’s right, Radio Skrillex. Until next time, wub-lovers!”

It’s fucking weird, how _Skrillex_ has started to sound so fake now that Joel knows his real name. It’s almost difficult to connect the two, the voice that’s Sonny and also the voice that’s Skrillex, and Joel hates that it’s _effort_.

Joel turns the music up until it’s rattling the window under his elbow.

Whatever.

//

They’ve been arguing for three consecutive Justice tracks about the optimal way to obtain caffeine in the zones. Joel’s got barely half an eye on the road, more concerned with pressing his point.

“You can get caffeine pills for basically free if you feel like getting involved in a firefight or two, Dracs pop ‘em like candy,” Joel argues. “Crush those up and put them in your soda of choice and you’re good for a fucking week.”

Sonny makes a sound like a deflating balloon, squeaky and dismayed.

“That’s like, actually poison dude,” he says, “Just make some goddamn coffee and take a nap!”

“It's double the fucking caffeine and I don’t have to sleep, what the fuck is your issue?” Joel demands, not even angry. He’s just enjoying the back and forth.

“Somewhere out there Darwin is rolling in his fucking grave,” Sonny says, despairing. Joel can almost see him, the rueful grin and rolled eyes. Almost except he's got no idea what this dude looks like. No clue if he's tall or short or old or young or… anything. Joel’s got nothing.

He swallows the stupid, idiot urge to blurt… something. His name, something else. ‘I’m glad you’re alive’, maybe.

“Darwin’s in his grave and I’m not, so who’s the real fucking winner?” he counters and Sonny snickers, almost a concession.

“Just remember to drink water too, shithead,” he says, still laughing, “I gotta get back, it’s top of the hour. Later, Maus.”

“Peace,” Joel says, too late. The line’s clicking dead, the hiss of an empty frequency.

He sets the handset back in its makeshift cradle and kicks his car into gear to the sounds of Breakbot too calm in his ear.

He pretends he hadn’t been a half-minute away from telling Sonny his name. It’s fucking stupid, a stupid desire and a stupid risk. Too dangerous, for someone he doesn’t even know, and not even important either. It doesn’t _matter_.

Pavement squeals under his tires and he presses the accelerator harder.

//

The sun’s setting and the desert’s all lit up with it.

Normally Joel would be screaming through it, enjoying the last hours he can push the limits of his accelerator. When it gets dark he has to drive with his lights off or deal with the Dracs that always seem to be finding his ass.

He’s not in a hurry this run, though. Low-priority and low pay, something just to keep a little gas in the tank and a few bottles of stale water rolling around on the floorboards. He can afford to take an evening off just to stretch out with his feet on the dash and relax.

It’s kind of too bad Joel doesn’t really do relaxation.

He’s got the radio on and up but it’s not really enough, he’s feeling antsy and bored. Technically speaking he could just turn the key in the ignition and keep going – he could maybe even make it to the little shithole of a neutral town that’s his destination by tomorrow morning. It just feels too much like admitting defeat.

He grumbles wordlessly and kicks at the carpet for a minute and then gives up, reaches for the handset and dials in the frequency without even thinking about it.

The line is picked up in seconds.

“What’s up?” Sonny asks with practiced smoothness tinged with just a little bit of irritation.

The rapidity makes Joel kind of wonder what else Sonny gets up to, if he even has anything else he does with his time. He’s never off the air for long, maybe a few hours at a time. And it’s not like he’s ever _not_ answered when Joel’s called.

“Hey,” Joel says, and has to smile when Sonny makes a sound of relief.

“Oh, hey,” Sonny says and sighs. “Jesus.”

“You can just call me Maus,” Joel says reasonably.

“Fucker,” Sonny says with a snort.

“Anyways,” Joel says and stretches out in his seat. He's feeling less edgy already. “I called in looking for someone, you think you could help me?”

Sonny hums suspiciously, crackling over the airwaves, onto him already.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, amused and a little guarded.

“You got a Mister Wall there?” Joel asks, and Sonny laughs outright.

“Maus, c’mon,” he says, sounding despairing and indulgent. Joel grins up at the patchy fabric stapled haphazardly to the ceiling of his car.

“Sonny,” Joel says. “Fucking work with me here. Mister Wall, is he fucking there?”

He’s not used to the feeling of the name in his mouth yet. Doesn't feel like he ever will be. It tastes different than Skrillex had, softer and more… more real. More personal.

Which, obviously, it’s his real fucking name.

Joel rolls his eyes at himself. He’s a serious fucking loser.

“No, no Mister Walls here,” Sonny reports. He’s sounding increasingly amused.

“Well how about Misses Wall?” Joel asks and Sonny apparently tries to muffle his giggle. It doesn’t really work, the sound bouncing down the radio waves and falling perfectly audible through Joel’s handset.

“Nope, no Walls of any kind here,” Sonny says.

“Then what the fuck is holding up your ceiling?” Joel demands and is rewarded with Sonny’s laughter, loud and unembarrassed and unrestrained.

“You're a fucking loser,” Sonny says finally, voice rich with laughter.

“Takes one to fucking know one,” Joel counters and lets out a long breath. “What's up, though, you sounded pissed as hell when you picked up.”

“Okay, well,” Sonny begins vehemently almost before Joel’s finished speaking, “first of all, first thing in the morning Dillon calls in - you know him, right, he puts out music as DJ Hanzel sometimes? Well he calls in like, twenty goddamn times requesting Zedd’s music and it's like-,”

He sounds gleefully pissed, a notable improvement on tired and annoyed. Joel smiles and lets the handset rest on his shoulder. Propping an arm over his face lets the crook of his elbow press his eyes shut. He can feel the last of the sunset warming his skin.

//

He's been riding straight caffeine powder and sunshine on no sleep for two and a half days.

It feels good, though, he’s settled into a shiny place between total exhaustion and something beyond that. Everything sparkles at the edges, glittering hard and brilliant in the morning sun, and he has to concentrate to feel his hands on the wheel. The road is singing under him, sweet and humming and somehow loud in his ears.

The air is sharp on his skin even when it’s just the motion of his hands in the air.

It’s beautiful and Joel doesn’t like the thought but it’s there anyway, it’s in his head and he’s alone so he lets himself smile at it.

His eyes keep catching on the far horizon, the blue of mountains in the haze of radiation, the gentle cupped silhouettes of craters. He forces himself to keep his eyes on soft grey pavement instead. It’s hard.

He keeps drifting.

Joel wakes to the hard flare of agony in his side as he’s thrown against the window of his car.

A moment of vertigo and the momentum reverses and he’s tumbling back across the seat, over the console to slam shoulder-first into the passenger window, so much pain that for a moment he’s blind. His stomach rolls and he thinks he’s going to vomit. He thinks his fucking shoulder’s been dislocated.

Gravity shifts and then he’s weightless again and in the brief instance of returning vertigo and everything moving so rapidly Joel can’t keep up with it he sees out the windshield.

The glass is webbed with cracks and the horizon is where the sky should be.

The he’s being thrown across the car again and he sees through the window, in the moment before his head connects with glass and everything goes black, that the car’s still got a hell of a hill to roll down.

//

He wakes slowly, a haze of agony bright and blazing in his head.

For a long time – it feels like a century but it could have been an hour, could have been five minutes – all he can do is breathe and groan and let the wetness in his eyes overflow without embarrassment because everything just _hurts_. His back is a mess of pain, his shoulder a minor forest fire, his legs numb and aching in a way that scares the hell out of him. He thinks the sun must be beating down on him because he’s so hot his stomach rolls with it. But his head’s the worst.

Shaking, he tries to turn over. He can’t see for some reason, there’s something sticking his eyelids shut. The motion sets off more pain and sick nausea in his stomach and he twists himself onto the side without the fucked-up shoulder and heaves.

Nothing comes up and he sobs for breath for a moment before slowly, laboriously turning over onto his stomach.

Everything hurts but the fact almost makes it easier to reach up and scrub clumsily at his eyes, means that motion is no less painful than stillness. Whatever’s sticking his eyelids shut is gummy, thick and sticky and clumping his eyelashes together. It takes a minute but he gets both eyes unstuck, still hazy and unfocused.

It’s bright, he discovers. The sun is baking down, turning his skin brilliant white. It only makes it easier to see that what’d been sticking his eyelids together is blood.

He closes his eyes and he thinks he passes out for a little while because when he opens his eyes again the blood on his hand is totally dry.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and coughs through what feels like an inch of dirt and smoke in his lungs. He has to swallow back the dull pound of panic in the base of his throat. It’s not a lot of blood, he reasons with himself. He’d obviously just cut himself somewhere.

Belatedly he turns his head to the side, resting his cheek against the hot, gritty earth.

He can see down the hill from his vantage point, and at the bottom his car is a fucking wreck.

Somehow in the unconscious spin he’d been thrown free, a serendipitous combination of his stupid decision not to wear a seatbelt and sheer idiot luck. Possibly the only reason he’s still alive, because a good fifty feet away is the brutalized remains of what had been his car.

The windows are a glittering trail of broken glass across the dirt. Joel can barely make out what had been the Nyancat mural, so much twisted and peeling metal. There’s smoke rising from it, a thin dark trail climbing into the sky like a signal flare. It’s terrifying, the possibility of a fire and the worse possibility of a Drac coming looking. Joel can’t fight like this. He isn’t even sure he can walk.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he coughs out again, louder, and thrashes for a moment of anger and shame and more anger.

He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up more spectacularly than he’d ever even thought he’d be capable of. He’d fucked up legendarily, mythologically, and it’s only by the grace of some massive act of karma that he’s still alive. Runners die all the time for mistakes less stupid and Joel finds a moment in the earth-rending pain for just a little bit of hot embarrassment.

He’d driven off the fucking road and flipped his goddamn car. What the hell.

He spends a minute, maybe five but less than ten, just lying in the dirt and taking stock. His arm’s definitely dislocated. His legs aren’t broken but they’re bruised and aching and numb from lying in one place for hours. His ribs are bruised at the least, possibly broken. He feels swollen and prays that it’s just sunburn and not internal bleeding. And he probably has a fucking concussion.

He needs to get help.

“Fuck my fucking life,” he grits out, voice gravel and scraping its way from his throat, and begins to crawl.

It’s easier going than he’d thought it would be though not by much. The slope helps and he tries to roll once, though he gives up on that idea rapidly when it pulls his dislocated shoulder. It takes him maybe half an hour to make it to the car, half an hour to go what can’t be more than sixty feet.

He rests briefly by the passenger side, laying a hand on hot, crumpled metal. Nyancat’s smiling from it still and he flips it off tiredly. If he survives this, doesn’t die of internal bleeding or fucking sunstroke, he’s getting a new car and he’s not painting a goddamn thing on the side.

He resumes his crawl.

The cab of the car is a mess of metal and strewn belongings and Joel drags himself carefully inside through the shattered passenger window. The shade is delicious and he props himself up against a twisted strut. A moment of rummaging reveals a dented water bottle that had somehow escaped being punctured and he grabs it greedily, chugging the stale, warm water. It’s the most delicious thing he’s ever put in his mouth.

The radio, he discovers when he’s managed to keep down the water, is in one piece.

There’s nothing playing but when he hesitantly thumbs at the dusty power button it flickers to life in a hiss of broken static. Joel laughs dizzily, delighted, and then quiets instantly with a groan. He’s really starting to think his ribs are broken, not just bruised. Dangerous.

The handset takes a few minutes to dig out, a few minutes of increasing panic before he unearths it from under what had been the passenger seat. It’s dented but functional too and Joel takes a moment to breathe out his relief. It’s not quite a prayer but it’s not quite anything else either.

He dials in the frequency with shaking fingers. He’s still so goddamn tired, eyes swollen and heavy, pain molten and draining in his veins. He’s going to pass out soon. It’s inevitable, he can feel it creeping up in the distance of his thoughts, the way nothing is quite connecting right.

“You’re calling Radio Skrillex, this is Skrillex, what can-,” Sonny begins and Joel thinks abstractly that he could cry.

“Sonny,” he says hoarsely. His throat feels like the words are cutting their way out.

“Maus?” Sonny asks.

“Sonny,” Joel repeats mindlessly and then shakes himself. He’s drifting again and he still can’t afford to, he still needs to let Sonny know that he needs help, how to get to him. He can’t pass out now, _refuses_ to let himself die like this, of a _car crash_.

“What’s going on?” Sonny asks. His voice has dropped, suddenly tense and scared.

Joel wonders distantly if they’re broadcasting. If Sonny put something on to cover or just didn’t bother. His ears are ringing too much to really make out and he doesn’t much care, he finds. He’s got more pressing things on his mind.

“Crashed,” he says briefly and Sonny’s response is wordless and immediate, just a quiet noise of surprise and fear.

“What?” Sonny demands a moment later. “Maus, where are you, what happened?”

“Fucking crashed,” he huffs, fuzzily annoyed. He thought that’d been clear. “Car’s… gone. Can’t walk. Think I broke something.”

“What the fuck happened?” Sonny demands.

He sounds scared. Scared for Joel. It's almost touching, would be enough to make Joel hot and uncomfortable with how emotional it is if he were anything close to okay. As it is he holds in a pained noise as he shifts a little, trying to keep himself awake.

“Sonny,” he says and fights to get the words out. Even right on the edge of passing out again, even in so much pain his stomach is still rolling with it, he hates asking for help. He’s almost amused, in the distant part of himself that isn’t impulse and directionless reaction to pain. “Please.”

“Shit,” Sonny hisses. “Shit, okay, alright. Where are you, what do you need?”

“Uhh,” Joel sighs and lets his head loll back against the hot metal. He’s having so much trouble remembering the route he’d been taking, an even harder time piecing together how far he had to have drifted, half-unconscious and dreaming. “Route Pasadena? I was…”

He stops to think, can’t remember if he’d been right on the edge of Zone 3 or deep into it.

“Maus!” Sonny screams in his ear and Joel jerks, suddenly awake again.

He’d drifted off into grey thoughts, fuzzy and sleeping and- shit. Okay, he has to think, he has to because he can feel the tide of exhaustion still pulling on him.

“Pasadena,” he says again, and decides fuck it, they can find him by the smoke trail if nothing else. He just fucking _can’t find words_ , nothing but a warm fog where they should be. “Zone 3 I think. There’s… I think, there’s a fire, follow the smoke.”

“Okay,” Sonny says and exhales in a gust of static. It sounds right on the verge of panic. “Okay, I’ll fucking… I’ll find someone to get to you, shit. Stay awake okay? Don’t pass out, someone’ll be there soon, okay?”

“Mmmm,” Joel hums. He so fucking tired. He still hasn't slept, not really. Passed out for a few hours. He's so tired and everything hurts so much and he just wants to sleep.

“ _Maus!_ ” Sonny shouts.

“Smoke,” he repeats dizzily, and drops the handset.

In the moment between the sick swoop of fatigue and dark unconsciousness he's pretty sure he can hear Sonny still.

He's shouting obscenities. Typical.

//

The pain is what wakes him.

The pain, and someone humming loudly in his ear. They're off-key and almost tuneless and Joel rapidly becomes aware they’re pawing at his shoulder, trying to get him to turn over. He does so, groaning loudly because fuck, _fuck_ , everything still hurts.

He looks up into a black mask, big white triangle eyes glowing at him. The owner's flashing the Zone’s most obnoxious smile.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” the man says. Joel deeply regrets that the fact that he's about to pass out is going to prevent him from trying to punch him right in the smug grin.

“Fuck you, Bob,” he grunts and then passes the fuck out.

//

Joel opens his eyes, sees a dark shape against the brilliance of a fluorescent white light, and throws the punch without stopping to think.

He misjudges so badly he wrenches what had been his dislocated shoulder and misses by approximately a foot.

The dude leaning over him skips back a little bit out of reach anyway, making a familiar squawk of indignation. Joel figures it out before he even blinks his eyesight clear, before he's sorted out his limbs and which pains are most pressing.

“Sonny,” he says, and the man smiles tentatively.

“You're awake,” he observes.

It’s the same voice but it’s not. It’s not even close to the same, in person.

He's fucking tiny. A tiny mess of long hair and worn, patched clothing, surprisingly muted and dark for someone wanted so badly by BLI. There's a splash of a scar across his jaw and cheek, white and shiny like an old burn. He’s got taped-together scuffed-up glasses and nervously twisting hands and Joel wonders how someone that looks so soft has managed to escape getting fucking destroyed by the Zones.

Joel grits his teeth against _whatever_ it is that's making something in his chest flip. Thinking is fuzzy and slow like he's been drugged, painkillers or something. He feels jazzy as fuck and that's not a good sign for his sobriety.

“You drugged me,” he realizes and then yawns, outrage muted by the cotton stuffed into his brain. He’s still tired, almost indecently sleepy.

The tiny hopeful smile on Sonny’s face twists into a scowl and suddenly he looks significantly less nervous. He looks kinda almost scary, actually.

“You’ve got two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and second degree burns all over your back,” he counters, acid. “Not to mention the bruises, cuts, and the _fucking concussion_. Bob said it looked like you just drove right off the fucking road, care to explain that?”

“Fuck off,” Joel mutters after a moment of hesitation. He prays his hot embarrassment isn’t showing on his face. Absolutely no part of him wants to admit that the reason he’d crashed and burned so goddamn badly was that he’d refused to stop and take a _nap_. He’s pretty sure Sonny suspects anyway. Goddamnit.

“You're fucking unbelievable,” Sonny says and sighs, turning away to shuffle through a mess of junk on the table next to him.

Joel takes the opportunity to look around, knuckling uncomfortably at his hot cheeks.

He's in a neat, cluttered room, blackout curtains drawn over what he assumes to be windows. Posters on the walls, Daft Punk and Mad Gear, a badly drawn flyer for a Justice show, a signed picture of AKA Loretta. A couple yellowing pictures taped up in the corner Joel doesn’t look at for too long, unwilling to dig too deep into Sonny’s privacy. Through the door he can see a tangle of wires leading away down the hall.

He's in Sonny’s nest, he realizes. Jesus.

A bottle of water nudges against his hand and he startles, jerking away before he can stop himself. The fucking drugs, making him slow and stupid. He fucking hates being drugged.

Sonny is watching him with a carefully neutral expression, arm still extended.

“I've got to get back to the broadcast,” he says. “You should sleep.”

Joel takes the bottle of water after a moment of hesitation that goes on way too long to be comfortable. It’s sealed, cracks satisfyingly when Joel twists the cap. He realizes he’s so thirsty his throat feels dusty when he takes the first sip and ends up chugging half the bottle. It tastes like warm plastic.

Sonny takes the bottle back before Joel can try to reach over to set it on the table, setting it on the edge closest to Joel.

“Seriously, try to sleep it off,” he says quietly and stands up.

Joel tries to watch him go but by the time Sonny’s turning to head down the hall his eyes are too heavy to keep open.

//

This time when Joel opens his eyes the room is dark and he’s alone.

The drugs have worked their way out of his system, he realizes when he takes stock. His back is on fire for one thing, his shoulder a solid aching knot and his head a sharp stab of pain when he tries to move. The false soft cotton of drug-induced docility is also gone, his reaction time almost back entirely.

Also, he realizes, he’s almost totally naked.

It makes sense, he decides when he kicks the thin blankets off and realizes a majority of his skin is bandage. He still doesn’t like it and spends a moment trying to decide whether he hopes it had been Sonny or Bob stripping him.

He comes down on the side of Sonny and resolves to never tell anyone ever, _ever_.

He finds his pants in a crumpled pile against the far wall and shimmies into them, moving slow to avoid aggravating his bruises and trying to mostly lift around the bandages. He can’t find his shirt and vaguely spends a minute or so poking around trying to find a replacement before deciding not to care. The water’s still where Sonny had left it and he drains it thoughtfully, wondering what his next move is.

The Nyanmobile’s finished. No way it’s coming back from that, not even Zedd could hammer something out of that mess. With it goes Joel’s livelihood, the only way he really has to keep himself in food and water. He’s utterly dependent on Sonny for the moment.

He’s gotta go find Sonny and ask him about it, Joel realizes with a grimace. Fuck. He fucking _hates_ having to admit he’s got nowhere to go.

The place – house? gas station? fucking abandoned church? Joel has no way of knowing – is almost pitch black when Joel tentatively hobbles out into the hall. It feels deserted and Joel’s reminded again that he knows nothing at all about Sonny. If he has friends or works alone or what, how he moves his kit from place to place. How he gets food and water, what sort of generator he’s running on.

There’s the faint sounds of music coming from down the hall to his left so he sets off that way.

He recognizes the tune before he spots the faint golden light coming from under the door. It’s DJ Hanzel, muffled and faint like the volume’s turned down.

He listens at the door for half a minute and doesn’t hear anything, not even the rustle of movement. Just the beat and a singer, some dude talking about how much he needs loving. Joel rolls his eyes and knocks and there’s still no answer. Very briefly he considers going and looking somewhere else, leaving what has to be the most private part of Sonny’s world untouched.

Fuck that, he decides and tries the knob. It’s unlocked and he opens the door with only a cursory attempt at subtlety.

At first he doesn’t even see Sonny, momentarily distracted by the blink of LEDs and the shine of light off metal and plastic. He’s never seen anything really like it before and it’s a little disorienting.

The room is tiny, had maybe once been an office of some kind. The walls are dark and bare, not even superficial scuff in the paintwork. The heavy desk in the middle of the floor dominates the room entirely. It’s barely visible under a nest of wires and boxes of components and stacks of CDs and machines Joel doesn’t recognize, music emerging faintly from somewhere in the tangle. There are enough mugs half-full of murky coffee to give Joel a moment of sympathetic heartburn.

He spots Sonny when he steps further into the room.

He’s sitting in the chair behind the desk, sort of. He’s got his face down among the wires and boxes, a mess of long dark hair, arms tucked over his head. His glasses are folded neatly beside him and there’s a pair of headphones askew around his neck. It looks peaceful.

Joel swallows back- something. It had felt like words but when he thinks about it he can’t think of what they could be.

The song winds to a close and silence falls for a moment. Then lights shift incomprehensibly and a new song starts up, a sweet slow build Joel doesn’t recognize.

Sonny stirs, a faint noise of distress and his arms pulling tighter around his head. Belatedly Joel realizes that he must have been sleeping in Sonny’s bed, that Sonny must not have _had_ anywhere to sleep. It’s a thought he briefly considers feeling guilty for. It’s not like he’d asked to be put in the bed. Drugged as he had been, he probably would have slept anywhere.

Whatever. He dismisses the whole concept.

“Hey man,” he says loudly, and reaches out to shake Sonny’s shoulder.

Things happen very rapidly.

Sonny’s on his feet in a split-second, toppling over himself in the rush to move away from Joel. Joel jerks back instinctively himself and barks his hip neatly on the edge of the desk. There’s a moment of chaos where he’s shouting in pain and trying to twist to check his hip without aggravating his back and Sonny’s still a blur of movement away from the desk.

Sonny’s crouched against the far wall when Joel bothers to stop clutching his hip and swearing. He’s staring, eyes wide and glittering through a mess of long hair and there’s a gun in his hand Joel hadn’t even seen him going for. For a moment Joel can kind of see how he’d managed to live so long on his own.

“Shit, man,” he says slowly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

Sonny breathes out, a harsh sound, and stands up straight jerkily. The gun’s back out of sight, tucked somewhere into his long folds of dark clothing somehow Joel didn’t see.

“S’cool,” he says and brushes the hair out of his face. “I was, uh. Wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah, I could fucking tell,” Joel snorts and rubs his hip a final time.

Sonny reaches past him and snags his glasses, settling them on his face and smiling weakly at him. They make his face look softer.

“Didn’t think you’d be up for another few hours, it’s like… midnight?” he says. “It’s cool though. Uh, you hungry? I’ve got some actual food around here somewhere if-,”

“I’m not hungry,” Joel interrupts impatiently. He’s fighting the urge to fidget uncomfortably and it’s making him grumpy. He suddenly wishes he were wearing a shirt.

“Uh,” Sonny says, and everything about his expression says he’s about to offer something else, probably coffee or something irrelevant.

“Okay, listen,” Joel breaks in and Sonny closes his mouth, eyebrows drawing together curiously.

Joel takes a moment to try to reorder what he wants to say but it’s hard, he still hates having to ask for help. Hates having to admit he needs it.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” he says slowly, unwillingly. “I was a runner, I don’t have a car anymore.”

Sonny nods, eyes going distant for a moment. He knows what Joel means, that now he’s got less than nothing. Runners aren’t even _runners_ without their vehicles.

“There wasn’t much left,” he agrees. Joel winces.

“Yeah,” he says and shrugs. “So I was going to ask if, you know, you had any idea where I could go.”

Unexpectedly Sonny grins. It’s wide and hopeful and so completely not what Joel was guessing he would do – awkwardly put him off maybe, or just shrug and offer nothing at all – that he just blinks for a moment.

“I was going to ask, actually,” Sonny says, gesturing expansively. “I’ve been meaning to go mobile for a long time now, it’s hard for me to keep this shit going with BLI on my ass every second of the day and it’s just me here most of the time.”

Joel catches the direction Sonny’s heading and he’s considering it before Sonny’s voice even fades from the air.

“You want me to, what, drive for you?” he asks slowly.

He must sound doubting because Sonny’s smiles fades.

“It’d be temporary if you wanted,” he says quietly. “Just until you got a new ride and I found someone else. But I don’t know. You don’t have to.”

Joel considers his options. He doesn’t have any, not really. And anyway… he likes this idea. He likes the idea of driving what’s probably going to be the most unwieldy van in the world across miles and miles of desert. Fighting an ungodly number of Dracs every step of the way. The music would be constant. And Sonny…

Joel carefully files away the weird little flip his stomach does when he considers that particular aspect of the situation for later consideration. Way later. Never, maybe.

“I mean, I trust you for whatever goddamn reason,” Sonny’s saying when Joel bothers to tune back in. He looks embarrassed, eyes somewhere over Joel’s shoulder. “It’s not like I could pay you but we’d be sharing food and water and stuff so-,”

“It sounds good to me,” Joel interrupts.

Sonny’s mouth hangs open for a second, no sound coming out, and then it snaps shut and he’s smiling hugely. It transforms his face, makes it look stupid and joyful. Joel flicks that thought away as soon as he notices it.

“Seriously?” he asks, sounding disbelieving.

“Do I have to fucking repeat myself?” Joel asks and rolls his eyes, stuffing his hands uncomfortably in his pockets. “Yeah, I’ll do it. It sounds, uh… fun.”

“Shit,” Sonny says, still grinning hugely, and then he’s bouncing forward and his arms are around Joel before he can quite process what’s about to happen. He’s trapped in the hug, Sonny’s grip python-tight and trapping his arms, head resting warm against Joel’s bare chest.

Unwillingly he resigns himself and just looks up at the ceiling, waiting for it to be over.

“Oh man, dude, this is the greatest,” Sonny says and he’s bouncing up again, whirling away in a gust of cool air. “I’ve got a van lined up, and Zedd said he could rig me a portable setup if I wanted, it’d just take a week or so to set up. Jesus, Maus, thanks so much for this, you have no idea.”

“Joel,” Joel says without thinking, it just slips out of him, and it’s not until Sonny stops dead to stare that he really realizes that he’s done it.

“My name,” he continues uncomfortably after a lengthy beat of silence. “It’s uh… Joel. You can call me that. If you want.”

“Joel,” Sonny repeats and then he’s grinning again, that same stupid-wide grin. “Alright. I can do that.”


End file.
